Cauldrons were boiling night and day in the House of Life, the embalming chamber: ointments and unguents were being cooked—balm, styrax, cinnamon, myrrh and cassia; piles of wood were heaped up—sandal, terebinth, cedar, currant wood, mastic and the fragrant wood of the shuu tree; heaps of incense from Punt in lumps as big as a fist lay about. Clouds of dust rose over the copper mortars in which powders were made. Anyone unaccustomed to these pungent smells would have fainted coming into the chamber.
For thirty days and thirty nights they were cleaning, soaking, drying, salting, embalming, smoking and pickling the body.
The king watched everything. He saw the entrails being taken out through a slanting slit in the stomach, and the lapis lazuli sun beetle, Kheper, being put in the place of the heart. He heard the cracking of the bones when the nose was broken and the brain scooped out with a long flint knife.
Eyes of glass were set into the empty sockets. The hair of the wig, eyebrows and eyelashes was smoothed carefully. The nails, finger and toe, were gilded. A narrow plaited Osiris's beard in a wooden box was tied to the chin, for, in the resurrection of the dead, woman becomes man, the god Osiris. The bandage of the god Ra was put round the forehead, of the god Horus round the neck, of the god Tot on the ears, of the goddess Hathor on the mouth. And the mummy spun round and round like a spindle in the clever hands that bound it in endless bandages like a chrysalis in a cocoon.
A wooden, crescent-shaped support for the head was prepared and a prayer to the Sun—not the new god, Aton, but to the ancient god Ra—was written on a new sheet of papyrus: "Give warmth under his head. Do not forget his name. Come to the Osiris Makitaton. His name is the Radiant, the Ever-Living, the Ancient of Days. He is Thee."
Thus a new great and terrible god Makitaton grew out of little Maki.
Ancient wisdom went hand in hand with ancient crudeness and childishness: the hieroglyphic of the serpent in the tomb inscription was cut into two, so that the snake should not sting the dead, and fledgelings on the paintings had their feet cut so that they should not run away. A silver boat was placed in the tomb for the dead to sail the Sunset Sea, also a mirror, rouge, powder, a book of fairy tales and draughts: the dead could play a game with her soul; toys were also put in, among them Ankhi's broken doll, carefully pieced together.
A tomb effigy was made for the mummy: the bird Ba with a human face and hands, the soul of the dead girl, placing its hands upon her heart and looking lovingly upon her face was saying:
"The heart of my birth, my mother's heart, my earthly heart, do not forsake me. Thou art in me; thou art my Ka, my Double within my body; thou art Khnum, the Potter who hath made my limbs."
The Germinating Osiris was prepared, too: linen was stretched on a wooden frame, the likeness of Osiris's mummy was drawn upon it, a thin layer of black earth was placed over it and thickly sown with wheat. The frame was watered until the seeds germinated; then the crop was cut down smoothly like grass on the lawn. This green, spring-like resurrected body of Osiris was placed in the tomb by the side of the corpse. The living seemed to be teaching the dead: "Look, the seed has come to life—you do the same!"